Heavy Hearts

To say that the recent events have no affect on my life would be a lie. Although they are not as personal for me as Pulse, I am a human being and as such, I find the amount of violence and death to be devastating. And let me say, I am sorry for the loss of life for all people-both in the recent attacks in the Middle East and the shootings in the States. Violence is never the answer.

I wrote the response to Mr. Sterling a couple days ago, and I know that it was just words. Words are how I grieve the failings of humanity. As a writer and as a student, we are taught to focus our thoughts into sentences and papers, as a way to combat ignorance. For now, that is all I can do: combat ignorance.

You see, it isn’t a simple answer and solution situation. Generalizations are one of the most dangerous tools humans possess. Not all feminists hate men. Not all men are rapists. Not all cops are evil. Not all people of dark melanin are bad people. I can think of two historical periods in which generalizations caused devastation on a massive scale. The first, as I’m sure most are familiar with is the Holocaust. Jewish people, Gypsy people, Gay people, people with impairments and others were taken away and massacred for being different. And it happened here in America too. It wasn’t Jewish people, people of Asian ethnicity or the slave trade I am referring to, although there were troublesome times there as well. It is the Indigenous population I am referring to. The systematic slaughter of people who were different.

I am just one person. And so are you. It is not wrong to want justice for crimes committed. It is not wrong to hold police officers in high regards while also holding them to high standards. It is not wrong to ask for the law to pass just judgments.

The easiest way to make the changes we want to see in the world is to vote. I mean it. We vote on the people who are meant to lead us, to protect us. It takes not long at all (I was able to cast my ballot in the primaries in less than 10 minutes.) and it will affect you for ages to come. So with all of this in mind, I am going to implore the readers of my blog to use their better judgment.

I’m not telling you who to vote for. That isn’t why I’m writing. And that most definitely isn’t what I am saying. What I AM saying is that these incidents of violence and hatred and death will not cease if the person we elect as president is a hate-spewing, violence endorsing, racist, sexist, philandering, desperate monster. It will, should a person like that become president, become worse. And what happens when it is your children? Your parents or spouse or siblings? Will a presidential vote bring lives lost back? No. Will a vote stop all of the problems? No. But if you do nothing else, please, please make sure that the racism and hatred stops before it makes it to the White House.

I know a lot of response videos have been made for rallies, but this is one of the ones I have watched several times over. I hadn’t meant for this post to become political, but I guess it has.